Black Market Brewing Co. Rye IPA Review

Black Market Brewing, as it sounds, is a brewery trying to relight that excitement and mystery around bootlegging during prohibition, at least as their marketing goes. They started with a small garage sized warehouse and began with whatever ingredients they could afford to make beer with and created their first beer, Hefeweizen.

Today, it seems they have expanded their operations and actually have a bookable tasting room for private functions (minimum $1,000 to book). On that note, let’s get to tasting the beer…

Review

When opened, there was only a light citrusy aroma coming from the bottle. When poured, the hazy orange color begins foaming and gives way to a rather generous amount of head being supported by the thick forest of bubbles beneath. The aroma became more prominent from the glass, adding some slight malt and bitter orange notes, which helps round it out. On second sniff, the rye began to surface with some spice and sweeter caramel/malty smells.

The sip follows the nose in the balance between mal
t & hops and does have some of that rye spice. The carbonation is rather mild compared to what the bubbles suggested, a pleasant surprise. The mouthfeel is of smooth and a medium weight, somewhat lighter than I’d expect from an IPA. On the swallow, a blood orange taste is left on the tongue that lingers for a few seconds.

This beer is not quite what one would expect from an IPA, it does seem to taste and feel more like an extra hopped pale ale. Having said that, it is quite pleasant to drink as an everyday beer, no extremes. Due to the lack of extremes, not much else can be said about this particular IPA. It could be construed that this is more like an East-coast IPA, as they tend to be more balanced with malts.

Overall, pleasant to drink, well rounded, smooth, but doesn’t quite fit the typical description of an IPA when it comes to bitterness.

Pros

Smooth going down, well-balanced.

Cons

Upping the hops would help make it more inline with the IPA style, lacks that bitter punch I look for in my IPAs.